The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-09-29
CALIFORNIA; CRAZE.
A Real Estate Fever that Affects the
Whole State Wild and Senseless
Spectators all Around.

Whole State Wild and SenSelesS
Spectators all Around
From the Ne,o York Herald
Los ANGELES, Sept. 13-If the great
real estate boom which has been raging here
for two or three years could hold out an
other year all the land between Santa
Monica and San Bernardino, and between
Los Angeles and San Diego, would be cut
up into town lots, and sold to raging crowd
at ten per cent. cash and the balance in six
months and a year If it could last five
years more the whole State of California
would be laid out in town sites and sold !;
for 1t is curious fact that if you should
lay out a town on an inaccessible mountain
here just now you would find thousand
men ready to buy lots, even before the sur
Veyor's plats were ready.
The incidents of this remarkable real es-
tate craze are sometimes very odd. An i'm
pecunious San Franciscan came here in the
hope that something would turn up for him
and made 81 700 in three weeks by getting
up early in the morning, or staying up all
night, to secure the first place in the long
line of buyers at some real estate sale and
then selling out his chances. An Eastern
visitor surveyed the wondrous scene, went
in and made the cost Of his and his familys
excursion to the Pacific and $15, 900 besides
in a few weeks. Then, being a shrewd
fellow, he went out and went home.
I'm in the doleful dumps" said a resi-
dent of this Southern country. Il shall
never forgive myself tor my stupidity"
whats the NATTER" ne was asked.
"Well, paid 81 900 for a piece of prop
erty two years ago, and like a COMPOUNDED
fool sold it for S75, 900 two months ago Oh,
| could ram my head against stone wall,
he added, bitterly.
But you didn't do so badly"
"Badly9 Good heavens! the fellows sold
to have resold at a profit of S175, 900. If
hadn't been a blamed fool wouldn't have
lost ali that money"
HOW bill" WAS SUDDENLY ENRICHED
Coming down here from Riverside the
other day overheard two men talking, as
everybody does, about real estate. ''If it
hadn't been for me Bill would have been out
in the cold on that land" said one. ''Four
years ago it was so worthless that he re-
fused to pay the taxes on it. He felt poor
that year, and told the collector TO take the
land for the two years taxes he hadn't paid.
The land isn't really worth anything, but
after all the taxes were less than $25, and
coaxed Bill to pay them, and the other day
he sold out for S52, 000."
There are volumes of such tales, mostly
true. incredible as they sound, and great
number of substantial fortunes have been
realized by old residents who bought land
years ago at IS to SO per acre, and, to their
own amazement found men of late running
after them to pay S5OOto 81, GOO per acre for
the same land.
The boom began at Los Angeles between
three and four years ago. 1t has since then
extended to San Diego on the south, to the
Gorgonia Pass and farther even eastward,
and it has slowly spread, like an epidemic,
north ward, reaching and passing San Fran
cisco and Sacramento some months ago.
Wherever you travel between San Diego
and Sacramento real estate agents signs
seem to cover the country; new towns are
scarcely ever out of sight, the talk in the
cars is only of higher prices and of town
lots; land surveyors cannot put down stakes
and make plats fast enough, and farming
lands have gone up until many prudent
farmers reluctantly sell out their homes
pocket their money and go down into Lower
California or up into the northern part OF
| the State to look for cheaper lands.
FARM LANDS 5000 PER ACRE.
1--WE can sell our wheat lands just now
for from $50 to 5000 per acre." said one
such man to me; "a good many of us have
sold out, because that gives us good dea
of money, and l am going down to Ensenada
with some of my neighbors to see if We
can't buy big tract down there in Lower
| California to settle ourselves on, at such
prices that we shall have some money left
| in our pockets"
Has the whole State gone crazy9 A large
| part of it certainly has OF course there
| are solid reasons at the bottom of the gen
| eral rise in prices of land in this State. The
boom has been built up on these, as a card
| house is built, on the solid basis of the table
on which stands. Six or eight years age
| farming lands in California were really
cheap In the San Joaquin Valley, in the
Los Angeles Valley, in some parts
! of San Diego county and in other parts,
the lands were worth much more than their
market price, Moreover, their real value
was increased by the discoveries that have
| been made in the last dozen years of their
capacity and use. Many dry lands" were
| found to yield crops without irrigation.
| The happy thought of a miner, that as a
| tunnel driven into mountain in the search
| for precious metals always yielded water,
| if men wanted water and not gold why not
| drive tunnel? gave value to thousands OF
acres of fertile soil which needed irrigation
| for farmers began at once to tunnel for
water. A wider and more accurate
knowledge of the qualities of soils and
| the demands of certain kinds of fruit
trees gave special values to considerable
tracts For instance, while the apricot does
well enough as garden fruit in some parts
of Europe, certain parts of California are
the only region in the world where this
| fruit, so greatly used for canning, can be
grown and sold by the ton. Ask French
or German gardner for a ton of apricots
and he would think you crazy. Experiment
showed that wider areas were suitable to
| the cultivation of prunes, apricots and even
the citrous fruits than had been supposed in
| California, and that water was more abund
ant than any one twenty years ago believed.
ExCURsIoNIsTs AND THE BOOM
CONFIDENTLY with these discoveries the
excursion system, which has been a great
success, brought thousands of people to Cal
ifornia of that class which has some leisure
more or less ready money, and shrewd eye
| for business A great many of these, en-
| chanted with the winter climate and seeing
| that such country is bound to grow, bought
lands, and the money they dropped out here
in the last four or five years was felt al
over the southern part of the State. The
reports of these thousands of excursionists
began to bring farmers and capitalists tc
| California in shoals.
OF course, all this buying, building and
Improvement has brought a prodigious
| amount of new money into what is still G
sparsely settled region. A San Diego
banker reported here a few days ago that
his bank held as deposits 300 a head foI
every man, woman and child in the place
Probably not less than S10,000000 of East
ern coin have flowed into Southern Califor
MIA in the last two years for investment. Al
the same time population has rapidly anc